Danielle Smith says she will no longer speak on COVID prosecutor controversy

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she is not going to talk any further about a leaked controversial phone call and her involvement in how COVID-19 cases are prosecuted.

The phone call, made public by the Alberta NDP and first reported by CBC, was shown on video with her speaking with controversial pastor Artur Pawlowski.

Smith faced questions about the interaction as they suggested she spoke with Alberta Crown prosecutors, which a premier is not permitted to do.

She has denied the calls and admitted to calling Pawlowski in a news conference on Feb. 9.

In a separate news conference Monday, Smith gave a statement saying the report first published by the CBC would lead to defamation charges.

“As you know, there’s been a great deal of inaccurate, misleading, and likely defamatory reporting about my discussions with justice officials regarding amnesty for COVID prosecutions,” she read aloud from a written statement.

“I have been clear that neither I nor anyone within my staff have contacted any crown prosecutors, as has been alleged.”

Smith says the matter is “likely” to be the subject of any legal defamation proceedings, and she will not comment further.

“The advice that I received from my justice officials was there were several court actions that were taking place, and until they were resolved before the court, no further action could be taken. I follow this advice,” Smith said.

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Smith repeated those words throughout the press conference as she took questions from reporters.

“I’m also waiting for an apology for the misinformation in the stories that you and the CBC have written,” Smith told a CBC reporter Monday.

“I have always said that I need to stay in my legal lane. And I said that as well in that interview, my legal lane is the only thing I can ask is, Is it in the public interest?” Smith said.

“And is there a reasonable likelihood of conviction? Whenever I have asked my justice officials about this, they have said that there are matters that are going to be resolved before the courts and that we will await those outcomes, and I’ve taken their advice.”

She did not specify which company would be involved in the defamation lawsuit.

Meanwhile, a report from the Calgary Sun says Smith sent a letter to the CBC to retract the story by April 28 and has an “intention to bring an action against the CBC.”

CityNews has not been able to verify the letter.

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Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University, says Smith’s statement is more of a “legal strategy as it is a political strategy.”

“If this was about the CBC story in mid-January, where they talked about staffers emailing crown prosecutors, then they would have filed this soon after,” Bratt said.

“But this seems to come on the heels of the story on Wednesday, with the video of Danielle Smith and Artur Pawlowski, and in which she does say, Crown prosecutors, but CBC did not quote that, other media did.”

He says Smith is trying to “collapse” the two stories together and says it is designed to be a hit against the CBC.

“Which does good with the ‘defund the CBC,’ the ‘Trudeau funded CBC’ outlet. That helps by saying it’s now a legal matter,” Bratt said.

“This is a defensive strategy, and it’s a way of taking a major political liability off the table.”

Bratt says the CBC would not have published the story without it being vetted by lawyers and that it can offer “multiple levels of defence.”

“Even if we discovered definitively, and we still don’t know definitively if there was any communications between crown prosecutors and the Premier’s office. That doesn’t mean that CBC shouldn’t publish the story,” Bratt said.

“We have multiple interviews with Danielle Smith saying that exact same thing, including last Wednesday. Now, she said she was imprecise. But let’s see how that would hold up in court.”

Meanwhile, Alberta NDP justice critic Irfan Sabir told reporters Monday that the premier is avoiding responsibility by using the lawsuit as a veil.

He says Smith abused her office in the pastor’s case, which currently awaits a verdict.

Sabir has renewed his call for an independent investigation.

-With files from Logan Stein